Before Stefan Oneshot
by Erika Fox
Summary: Ok this is my first fanfiction: Oneshot setting up Elena's backstory before one Stefan Salvatore enters her life. Rated T to be extra-safe. I would LOVE any feedback! Love Erika xoxoxo


**The Vampire Diaries Fanfiction**

I carefully closed my bedroom door, freezing when the old hinge creaked in protest. Tiptoeing across the landing wary of particular giveaway floorboards, I peeked around my younger brother, Jeremy's, door. Perfect. Sound asleep with his duvet on the floor, pillow up the wall and both arms hanging limp over the sides of the bed. His mouth hung open, allowing a noise resembling that of a dying pig to noisily escape. I suppressed a laugh, my hand clamped firmly over my mouth, as I thought "I wonder _why _he is still single!"

Gazing around his room, I understood Jenna's constant moaning to get him to tidy up. Heaps of unwashed clothes littered the floor, school work piled messily on his old wooden desk underneath the window, while his abandoned drum kit sat in the corner of his room. I noticed it had been covered over with one of Jenna's disused tablecloths.

A wave of sadness washed over me. I hadn't heard Jeremy play his drums in… well. The last time must have been the weekend before the accident, which prematurely took both of our parents. My dad bought Jeremy the kit for his thirteenth birthday when he went through his Genesis phase. My brother goes through many weird and wonderful phases but surprisingly, this one has stuck. His signed Phil Collins poster that he got when Dad took him to one of their gigs the Christmas before is still on proud display above his kit.

I eased Jeremy's door shut and wiped a stray tear from my cheek, refusing to open up those wounds right now. Turning from the closed door, I began making my way down the stairs careful not to make a sound. Jenna is a very light sleeper. The last thing I wanted was for her to wake up and discover me out of bed at two am. For such a young woman, she is pretty strict when it comes to bedtimes.

Creeping down the stairs in pitch darkness with only my phone's flashlight as a guide, I paused to look at my favourite photograph hanging on the wall that vaguely resembles my Aunt Jenna. A wild young woman stands in the middle of a crowded hall at her university graduation after party, clutching a huge pitcher of lager, which I found out she drained two minutes after the photo was taken. Her backcombed auburn hair messily tied up in high pigtails, she grins rather drunkenly at the poor soul undoubtedly forced to take her picture. Donning a creased white shirt done up unevenly with her stripy purple bra clear as day, a tiny, almost non-existent black leather skirt, fishnet tights and knee-length boots, you would never imagine that one and half years on, someone could change so much.

Jenna never really knew what she wanted to do with her life. Her twelve years older sister, on the other hand, married her childhood sweetheart as soon as she was out of college, spent three years as a hairdresser then promptly left when she became pregnant with me. She had Jeremy two years later and never went back to work. Instead of going to university aged eighteen like all of her friends, Jenna packed a small rucksack and left town with her boyfriend Larry to travel the world. She started off in Australia, quickly dumped Larry and took up with native hottie Kris. They travelled around the country together and finally settled in Vancouver, Canada, where they got many day jobs and then partied every night, spending all their earnings on countless shots.

After four years of travelling, she returned home to Mystic Falls, California with no Kris and no money. She stayed with Miranda and her husband Steve, and quickly became very close to her niece and nephew, who were twelve and ten years old at the time. I recall it being an eventful six months, with Mum and Dad despairing with Jenna's crazy lifestyle and not wanting her to be a bad influence on us. However, we pulled through it all even though our parents never really liked us calling her plain 'Jenna'. When we tried to call her 'Aunt', we all ended up in fits of laughter as it seemed ridiculous to call someone that when they are not much older than you. Mum and Dad didn't have to worry for much longer though because one evening, Jenna had an epiphany.

I remember she was cooking dessert in the kitchen, paying Mum back for a vase she smashed when staggering in the night before completely hammered. She was just adding her special homemade sauce over the freshly baked banoffee pie when Jeremy sneakily stole a handful of fudge, which she had made earlier that afternoon, from the cooling tray. Stuffing piece after piece into his mouth behind her back with me gleefully watching, Jeremy groaned with delight. Ears like a hare, Jenna spun round and caught the culprit red handed. Instead of scolding him for lack of manners as our mother would have done, Jenna nibbled her bottom lip and asked anxiously, "any good or just plain crap?" Jeremy replied almost inaudibly, his mouth full of the gooey sweets, "fanbloodytastic!" This was a phrase he had picked up from our father a few weeks ago and Mum was not best pleased!

Jenna threw back her head and howled with laughter. I giggled along too, always prepared to copy my favourite aunt. "That's it Jer! You're a genius!" Jenna shrieked. The confused look on Jeremy's face is still to this day crystal clear in my mind. "I am? How?" he asked, bewildered.

The next day, Jenna enrolled on a Hospitality and Catering degree course at the local university. Mum, being completely useless at cooking, was delighted. From then on, Jenna was round our house every Sunday night cooking the family a roast dinner. Dad wanted her round every night (if she was a way to save him from my mother's terrible cooking!) but Jenna didn't want to give up her rampant student night life. To make up for it, she wrote down all of our favourite recipes and stapled it together to make a little book. This became Dad's Bible, which he would peruse every night until he knew them all by heart and no longer needed the book. It now sits on my bookshelf along with other treasured possessions, most of which belonged to my parents.

Forcing myself out of my daydream, I stared at another photograph on the wall, right next to Jenna at her graduation after party. It shows Jenna, Jeremy and I last June at a restaurant celebrating my eighteenth birthday. Only a month before the event that shattered our carefree world, her wild backcombed auburn hair is still present, this time with a florescent orange bra in full view through her thin black blouse. The wide grin is just as drunken as in the photo adjacent. Jeremy stands almost a head taller than Jenna and I, who are both of similar height; although I am slightly taller even if she will never admit it! A huge smile is plastered on his face, undoubtedly laughing at my silly father trying to figure out how to work the camera Jenna bought me for my special birthday. He hasn't smiled like that in a while. Neither have I.

Wearing a sapphire blue dress, specially bought for the occasion and my white gold heart locket, a present I received from my parents a few moments before the photo was taken, I have my arms thrown around my hilarious, eccentric aunt and wonderful baby brother. Well, I say baby but he's sixteen! We have always been extremely close, doing everything together as children: fishing at the old Lake House Dad would rent out for summer holidays and shopping in town imagining we had all the money in the world are just a miniscule proportion of the fun times we had. He even bought me the black Chanel bag I had been gazing at wistfully months before my birthday. I dread to think how many hundreds of pounds it cost him but all he said was "you're worth it". So that's the reason why I may look a bit emotional in the photograph what with all the fantastic presents I received. It was a truly memorable day, with the moments saved forever on my camera. It was in fact the final occasion to be celebrated with our beloved parents.

You really would not recognise the people in the following picture. We're now at Jenna's twenty-seventh birthday dinner, taken a few days ago, the twenty-eight of December. The wild-haired woman I grew up admiring for her individuality, has disappeared and in her place stands an adult with sleek, straight auburn hair and a crisp plum shirt (neither a purple nor florescent orange bra visible). A small smile is present on Jeremy's face but the spark of energy is missing in his dark, chocolate brown eyes. And me? Well…sufficed to say, the locket hasn't been removed from my neck since my eighteenth birthday, but my smile looks forced and my eyes, matching in colour to Jeremy, also seem melancholy and lifeless.

When our parents and Jenna's sister and brother-in-law were killed in July, Jenna grew up quickly: she stopped partying every night, finally managed to quit smoking, bought some straighteners and learned to live without her trademark panda eye makeup. Although we told her not to change, she wanted to feel like a proper guardian and role model to us. She wouldn't listen to us when we said she was already those things. Even though she is still the same old Jenna to us (minus the visible bra and wild hairdo), she feels far more confident in herself, when coming into our high school for example, believing she now fits the part.

The thirteenth step creaked as I continued downstairs. I froze. Not a sound was heard from Jenna's room. All that could be heard were Jeremy's attractive-sounding snores. Breathing a very quiet sigh of relief, I made my way into the hall, pulling my burgundy winter coat over my lavender pyjamas. I swapped the matching furry mules, which were thankfully succeeding preventing frostbite in the house's chilly conditions, for the gorgeous black boots my mum picked up in the sale as an early birthday present for herself in the first few days of July. Sadly, she never got to see her fortieth birthday.

I remember peaking around the kitchen door to find Jenna sobbing uncontrollably into the phone, having to lean on the worktop for support. She had the horrible job of telephoning all the family who do not live in Mystic Falls to inform them of the tragic news… and to tell them the birthday party, booked for almost two weeks later, was indefinitely cancelled. There was no need to tell our friends in Mystic Falls as, it being a very small town, everyone learnt of the tragedy only a few hours after we did.

The claret red coloured dress I bought for the party hangs neglected at the back of my large wardrobe. The weekend after my eighteenth birthday, the girls and I went shopping to spend all of the money I had recently received. On discovering the dress, Bonnie and Caroline forced me to buy it, knowing full well I rarely spend that much money on clothes. They knew I secretly wanted it and that I would look radiant at the party the next month. As the occasion never went ahead, I shoved it out of sight and covered it in a plastic bag, refusing to bring to the surface painful memories of last summer. Half a year on, the dress still has not been touched.

The funeral was six days before Mum's birthday celebrations were meant to have taken place, July the fifteenth. It was a busy affair with our entire family travelling from all over the world to be there along with the whole town of Mystic Falls. Countless numbers of people came over to us weeping and saying repeatedly how dreadfully sorry they were for our tragic loss and that we were very lucky to have had such parents for the time we did and that our parents were great people who will always be remembered. Jeremy and I barely said anything. If anyone pressed us to speak, Jenna being Jenna forcefully told them to "bugger off and leave the kids alone". Jenna was an angel and never left our side throughout the dreadful day. She was a complete angel and didn't cry once during the service or even in the cemetery where we had to watch our parents lowered into the ground.

I sobbed uncontrollably and leaned on my brother who stroked my back reassuringly and held me firmly, stopping me from leaping into the ground to stay with them forever. I was very grateful of his support as on one leg, it was proved especially difficult. The other was stiffly stuck in dull grey plaster; my souvenir of the accident, which killed the driver and front passenger but left the teenager in the back with only a broken right leg and a small, deep scar above her eyebrow. Everyone keeps saying what a miracle it is that I survived such a catastrophic crash. When photos of the accident were posted on Mystic Falls Breaking News the next morning, I saw the extent of the damage to our old Volkswagen. There was barely any of it left.

Jeremy amazed me. I was supposed to be the brave older sister and protectively take care of him but our roles were reversed that day as I relived the accident throughout the service. Jeremy bottled up his emotions and I haven't seen him cry since the day we were sat in the hospital waiting for my plaster to solidify and were told that our parents would never be coming home.

Jenna on the other hand, may have remained strong whilst at the funeral, which we later found out this was for our sake, but as soon as we were safely upstairs and in bed asleep, all the suppressed emotions that had built up during the past few day's events, came roaring to the surface. I couldn't sleep so creeping downstairs to seek some comfort in another person who I knew would be suffering as much as, if not more, than myself. Looking round the living room door, I saw Jenna, my strong, happy-go-lucky aunt, howling into the sofa…and a bottle of vodka.

Knowing Jenna would not want me to witness her in such a state, I returned weeping brokenly to my bedroom. The next morning, the only giveaway of her emotional episode was an empty bottle of Smirnoff in the trash can, hidden underneath a pile of tissues.

Shaking out my hair from its loose ponytail and pulling my coat tightly up under my chin, I unlocked the front door and braced the icy winter's air outside. I closed the door gently behind me and watched my breath blowing out from between my lips. The sky was clear, allowing thousands upon thousands of tiny stars to shine down on me standing huddled up in my warm coat on the front lawn. The street was still wide awake; the Leahy's house fully lit with loud music blaring from its open windows. Thankfully at half past two, the fireworks had at least finally stopped.

I've never been a really religious sort of person but since my parents' untimely death, I find comfort in thinking they are up there somewhere, watching over me, Jeremy and Jenna. I have been told uncountable times from relatives and the priest who led their service and buried them that they will always be with me and so on. Jeremy always retorts with "utter crap" but I swear he doesn't believe what he is saying and secretly wants to have some faith. "It's just his way of dealing with his grief. People mourn in different ways" said the psychologist Jenna sent him to when he didn't speak for a whole week after the funeral.

Four days before Christmas Day, the twenty-first of December, was a very difficult day for everyone; almost as difficult as Mum's birthday. It marked the six month anniversary of the accident. I guess we were all shocked at the length of time that had passed. The six months felt like a blur. We didn't do much. The three of us stayed in our pyjamas and sat snuggled up on the sofa in Jenna's huge duvet watching films all day, trying to distract ourselves. Jenna ordered pizzas and we picked distractedly whilst staring at the television screen. The food would not fill the empty hole in our stomachs.

When the telephone began to ring, Jenna hastily unplugged it. We didn't want any condolences today. When she checked for messages the next morning, there were fifty-seven from family and friend – and most of Mystic Falls. She deleted them. We were all aware of others suffering but we just didn't want a painful reminder.

Looking up at the starry sky, I clutched my locket around my neck and whispered "Happy New Year." January first. New year. Fresh start.


End file.
